In Defense of Intent

[Kalbear]

3 hours ago, Alarich II said:

I imagine, that this kind of comparative statement is really hard to prove or to disprove, because it will depend on the nations you are using for comparison. You'd probably have to narrow it down to "industrialized slavery" too and set some kind of timeframe, because the concept of slavery is by no means foreign to other nations.

America had significantly more of its capitalization around slavery, had slavery longer, had more slaves in the country longer, and currently has significantly larger wealth inequality - especially among previously enslaved minority populations - than other countries. It's really not that hard.

57 minutes ago, Ran said:

A much likelier cause for the wealth gap has to do with things such as the exclusion of agricultural labor from Social Security in the early 20th century (disproportiontely leading to elderly African Americans and Hispanics using up their savings, and sometimes that of their descendants) and the practice of redlining in urban areas that sucked out generational wealth from African Americans, Hispanics, and others. Racism certainly plays a part in this. Not so much slavery.

If only there was some weird relationship between racism and slavery.

Also, the laws about Social Security were specifically targeted to exclude African Americans. That it also excluded other minorities working was a bonus, but probably more accidental than anything and having to do with jobs that slaves previously worked having lower social status than other jobs - which happened to be a lot of jobs that minorities could do.

 

[Zorral]

African Americans ancestors are the only group that came to North America (and South America and the Caribbean) against their will.  And they came with absolutely nothing, not even a scrap of clothing.  Everything was stripped away from them except the spiritual knowledge and other knowledge in their minds.  They were consciously, systematically prevented for generations from accumulating ANYTHING AT ALL INCLUDING FAMILY AND EDUCATION. They were locked out of unions, out of the G.I. Bill, out of voting, out of everything. All those starter low to zero mortgage rates for starter middle class homes that proliferated after WWII, they were not allowed to have, along with the low to no tuition waver for higher education.  Anyone who thinks this has nothing to do with generational inequality and poverty knows nothing about how wealth is created over time.  And knows nothing about history either.

One of the big reasons that initially women weren't allowed to be part of the Social Security payment is BECAUSE IN THE SOUTH THE VAST AMOUNT OF DOMESTIC WORKERS WERE AFRICAN AMERICAN WOMEN.  The same with farm workers' exclusion.  Tell us that isn't systematic and conscious and has / had no effect.  

 

[Larry of the Lawn]

A really good podcast that talks about race as a factor in civil judgments:

https://www.alabseries.com/episodes/episode-21-baked-in

they use the NFL as a jumping off point but this also touches on the Staten Island Ferry crash in the 90s and how it's a self-perpetuating cycle of systemic racism and institutions structural features that have let this still be a thing today.  

[Alarich II]

59 minutes ago, Karlbear said:

America had significantly more of its capitalization around slavery, had slavery longer, had more slaves in the country longer, and currently has significantly larger wealth inequality - especially among previously enslaved minority populations - than other countries. It's really not that hard.

More slaves than the Roman Empire? More slaves than the Russian Empire had serfs? More wealth inequality than Saudi-Arabia? Most of your assertions are only true in comparison to a very specific set of national within a very specific time-frame, so yeah it would bei very hard to prove that claim. And that there are no studies out there that prove it may have something to so with it. 

[Ran]

1 hour ago, DMC said:

Wealth inequality is not the same as income inequality.  See here:

There's a reason that I focus on income inequality in relation to wealth inequality.

Two recent economic papers ("The Dynamics of the Racial Wealth Gap", Alipantris et al., "Can income differences explain the racial wealth gap?", Ashman and Neumuller), taking more complicated approaches to assessing the nature of the wealth gap than T. Kirk White's work from over a decade ago -- which led to the common wisdom that closing the income gap did not move the needle very much on the wealth gap -- and both came to the conclusion that the wealth gap is basically 100% a result of an income gap. Which is why income inequality is a lot more central to the future of the wealth gap than vice versa. Indeed, if you gifted every single black woman, man, and child $150,000 but did not touch the income gap, the wealth gap would return, according to the models. 

The persistence of income gaps and income equality today have to do largely with 20th century policy decisions that prevented the narrowing of the income gap while also reducing the amount and viability of wealth transfers of families affected. A more redistributive fiscal policy in the U.S., would largely eliminate the wealth gap fairly quickly (a very substantial portion of the gap would disappear in about 50 years, per the models)

Which is why the focus on something from 160 years ago doesn't make much sense to me if the wealth gap can largely be closed in the span of a few decades if you suppose the correct fiscal policies are put in place to address the racial income gap. Or, in other words, policy from 60 years ago was much more relevant to the wealth gap as it exists today than policy 160 years ago.

 

 

 

[DMC]

7 minutes ago, Ran said:

Which is why income inequality is a lot more central to the future of the wealth gap than vice versa.

I'm not sure why you're focused on possible reductions of the wealth gap in the future when your objection was to the income/wealth gap not being derived from slavery throughout history.  The examples provided (not just be me) elucidate that the ability of nonwhites to grow wealth has been directly impeded by policy decisions since slavery ended.  And the notion this is rooted in perpetuating the inequality established through slavery seems manifest to me.  Suggesting otherwise is like saying Jim Crow policies in general were not rooted in and an attempt to reestablish/perpetuate the iniquity of slavery.

14 minutes ago, Ran said:

The persistence of income gaps and income equality today have to do largely with 20th century policy decisions that prevented the narrowing of the income gap while also reducing the amount and viability of wealth transfers of families affected.

Again, why you think those 20th century policy decisions were not informed by perpetuating racial inequality seems to be an intentionally myopic perspective of history.  Is that the only reason?  No.  But it's undoubtedly a big part of why the history of American welfare policy diverges so significantly from European counterparts.

[Kalbear]

1 hour ago, Alarich II said:

More slaves than the Roman Empire?

Give the US 1500 years, maybe they'll close the wage gap and the wealth gap

1 hour ago, Alarich II said:

More slaves than the Russian Empire had serfs?

Russia isn't a particularly good comparison since they've never been a particularly democratic state.

1 hour ago, Alarich II said:

More wealth inequality than Saudi-Arabia?

Ditto

1 hour ago, Alarich II said:

Most of your assertions are only true in comparison to a very specific set of national within a very specific time-frame, so yeah it would bei very hard to prove that claim. And that there are no studies out there that prove it may have something to so with it. 

There's been a whole lot of studies about it, many of which were already linked in this thread. 

[Alarich II]

7 hours ago, Karlbear said:

Give the US 1500 years, maybe they'll close the wage gap and the wealth gap

Russia isn't a particularly good comparison since they've never been a particularly democratic state.

Ditto

 

So now you are narrowing it down to a very specific set of nations, within a very specific timeframe, which is what I've been saying. You are cherry picking your "other nations" to fit your blanket statement and still...

Quote

There's been a whole lot of studies about it, many of which were already linked in this thread. 

this simply isn't true. None of the studies support your claim in comparison to other nations, because they are focused on the US.

TBH I feel like this exchange isn't very fruitful to me, you are just making blanket claims and when challenged, you are shifting goalposts and making untrue statements about your supporting evidence.

[Zorral]

And its unfruitful because you don't know what you don't know -- or won't acknowledge -- the recorded and much written about history of all this, which fills entire frackin' libraries.  Read some of it.

Or read the newspapers without filtering them through racist lens.

 

[Kalbear]

11 hours ago, Alarich II said:

So now you are narrowing it down to a very specific set of nations, within a very specific timeframe, which is what I've been saying. You are cherry picking your "other nations" to fit your blanket statement and still...

Picking 'western democracies since 1700' is hardly a big cherry pick. 

11 hours ago, Alarich II said:

this simply isn't true. None of the studies support your claim in comparison to other nations, because they are focused on the US.

TBH I feel like this exchange isn't very fruitful to me, you are just making blanket claims and when challenged, you are shifting goalposts and making untrue statements about your supporting evidence.

I don't feel it's particularly useful either given that @DMC and others have already linked studies and you've not read them; why should I link more so you won't read those too?

[Larry of the Lawn]

None of the other examples that have been mentioned even matter.  I think we all know damn well that in the US example there's a big fucking difference.  It's not like you can pick someone out on the streets of St. Petersburg and know just looking at them that it's likely that they were descended from a serfs.  Or that their entire family tree has lived an apartheid existence from Alexander II to fucking Kruschev.

 

If you need to mention the Roman empire to argue that the fact of slavery hasn't held back black americans vs white americans I dunno wtf to tell you.

[Walter the Singing Wildcat]

On 3/15/2021 at 11:33 AM, larrytheimp said:

Yes probabaly not particularly noteworthy in a discussion about white fucking privilege.  

 

I'm truly confused by this.  Wasn't the argument that income inequality is legit really bad across all races and not minimizing Black poverty or historical injustice contributing?  

[karaddin]

3 hours ago, Walter the Singing Wildcat said:

I'm truly confused by this.  Wasn't the argument that income inequality is legit really bad across all races and not minimizing Black poverty or historical injustice contributing?  

An argument that general income inequality has gotten worse over the last few decades is entirely distinct from the question of whether economic inequality along racial lines has its origin in slavery. The latter could have been moving in the opposite direction to the former over the last few decades and been more than offset by increasing income inequality within the (greater in numbers) white population. Its a measurement of a different thing that might correlate, but doesn't have to.

[DMC]

Funny thing about this?  America's inequality being rooted in slavery wasn't even a point of contention until about twenty posts ago.  This thread is like a seemingly endless, plodding, meandering play that's now entered its third act.  Let's hope there's not a fourth.

[Mlle. Zabzie]

3 hours ago, DMC said:

Funny thing about this?  America's inequality being rooted in slavery wasn't even a point of contention until about twenty posts ago.  This thread is like a seemingly endless, plodding, meandering play that's now entered its third act.  Let's hope there's not a fourth.

I would quibble slightly around the edges and say that the institution of slavery provides very little direct line to any particular wealth inequality today of any particular individual, however, the conditions created by slavery provide the most important contributing factor to the lag of creation of African American wealth in the 20th and 21st centuries.  Put differently, because of the prejudice based on skin color that was institutionalized by slavery, Jim Crow laws and their de facto equivalents (e.g., redlining, access to credit, etc.) were permitted (and encouraged) in the post-reconstruction era in ways that permitted non-African American U.S. residents to accumulate wealth both by directly exploiting African American labor at below-market prices and also because of the exclusion of African American families from wealth creation opportunities for 5 or 6 generations.  So yes, because slavery, but also no, it is only the inevitable result of slavery because that is the way it happened.  If Radical Reconstruction had been permitted to continue, for instance (or if Sherman’s 40 acres and a mule granted in his March to the Sea had been formalized, for instance), the outcomes might have been different.  But, it wasn’t.  And so we are where we are, which is that the institution of slavery normalized the exploitation of a group of humans resident in the United States based on their skin color and systematically denied that group of humans access to the full suite of opportunities available to other humans resident in the United States.

[Week]

1 hour ago, Mlle. Zabzie said:

And so we are where we are, which is that the institution of slavery normalized the exploitation of a group of humans resident in the United States based on their skin color and systematically denied that group of humans access to the full suite of opportunities available to other humans resident in the United States.

So, white supremacy. I would expect that assertion would get more pushback that slavery.

Or, to put a finer point on it, anti-black institutional racism.

[DMC]

5 hours ago, Mlle. Zabzie said:

I would quibble slightly around the edges and say that the institution of slavery provides very little direct line to any particular wealth inequality today of any particular individual, however, the conditions created by slavery provide the most important contributing factor to the lag of creation of African American wealth in the 20th and 21st centuries.  Put differently, because of the prejudice based on skin color that was institutionalized by slavery, Jim Crow laws and their de facto equivalents (e.g., redlining, access to credit, etc.) were permitted (and encouraged) in the post-reconstruction era in ways that permitted non-African American U.S. residents to accumulate wealth both by directly exploiting African American labor at below-market prices and also because of the exclusion of African American families from wealth creation opportunities for 5 or 6 generations.

I wouldn't even really call this quibbling.  Could or would the outcomes be different if Reconstruction was allowed to continue?  Of course!  Just like America's wealth could have been more lucrative without slavery.  But that's not what happened.  And the reason Reconstruction wasn't allowed to continue runs far deeper than Rutherford Hayes wanting to be president.  Moreover, Sen et al. demonstrate that the legacy of slavery still shapes political attitudes today (well, technically her outcome variables are about a decade old) with rather remarkable geographic precision.

I have to say, I find it quite bemusing that those decrying such emphasis on the persistence/legacy of slavery as ahistorical (tbc, not you) are also the ones most preoccupied with what could or would have happened rather than what actually did happen.

[Zorral]

What is the most risible is an insistence that somehow white supremacy, Jim Crow etc. are not connected to 400 years of African Americans being refused the capacity to accumulate anything in slavery, including names and family and eduction -- and that only 200 hundred years of white supremacy, systemic and systematic civil and legal and criminal codes were written to repress people from accumulating wealth and participating in the full legal, political and economic life of the USA -- including being denied education and the vote, and every other part of public benefit -- aren't connected to slavery and the wealth disparity between black and white.  It just boggles, it does. it does, it does.

 

[Ran]

  

7 hours ago, Mlle. Zabzie said:

Put differently, because of the prejudice based on skin color that was institutionalized by slavery, Jim Crow laws and their de facto equivalents (e.g., redlining, access to credit, etc.) were permitted (and encouraged) in the post-reconstruction era in ways that permitted non-African American U.S. residents to accumulate wealth both by directly exploiting African American labor at below-market prices and also because of the exclusion of African American families from wealth creation opportunities for 5 or 6 generations.

I find much I'm in agreement with here, but I can't help but note that "non-African America U.S. residents" would be better said to be "white U.S. residents", because Hispanics and Asians also suffered biases that weren't related to slavery or its institutionalization, but were the victims of general racism. Redlining in Los Angeles was not just an issue of impoverishing blacks, but also Hispanics, Asians, recent "undesirable" immigrants from Eastern Europe, and even working class whites by segregating them away from more prosperous persons and the consequent greater investment municipal government put in their neighborhoods. The Brookings Institute piece linked earlier by someone or other (which I was already familiar with, by the by), which rattles off a long list of things that have prevented the narrowing of the wealth and income gaps, has a handy chart which shows how very closely Hispanic lack of wealth tracks black lack of wealth, just as an example. (It is true that Asians are now in a very different position than they were a few decades ago. I'm sure there are essays and papers and why they rapidly advanced whereas other ethnic groups did not.)

In any case, income inequality is a thing that we can see moves appreciably in a matter of decades, not centuries, that the wealth gap narrows or widens consequently, and so that seems a reasonable focus of effort. No amount of acknowledgment of slavery will change the fact that people are impoverished now by the politics of recent decades and not those of a century and a half ago. and the focus on addressing that seems much more sensible than focusing on asserting dogmatic correct thought as the only way to address the actual concerns.

Finally, just to lay the cards on the table: in my view, the U.S. is in no fashion unique in its racial wealth gaps. You can look it up, but studies of a diverse number of countries -- in South America, the Caribbean, Europe, Asia, Oceania, Africa, our neighbors in Canada --you'll find racial income gaps (and consequent wealth gaps) in, basically, all of them. Even those with highly-redistributive policies, like France, seem able to go only so far to addressing the issue. The U.S. has some unique features in its history, but limiting access to wealth for those in the "out" group(s) is not one of them. Sadly, lots of nations did and do this. Slavery is not the common factor, but racism (of various shades) tends to be one.

For those inclined to feel nauseated, maybe keep that fact to yourself rather than trying to police the thread with your disdain or passive-aggressive suggestions that those who disagree with you on specific details within a broader framework of agreement are "incels".

[Mlle. Zabzie]

3 minutes ago, Ran said:

I find much I'm in agreement with here, but I can't help but note that "non-African America U.S. residents" would be better said to be "white U.S. residents", because Hispanics and Asians also suffered biases that weren't related to slavery or its institutionalization, but were the victims of general racism. Redlining in Los Angeles was not just an issue of impoverishing blacks, but also Hispanics, Asians, recent "undesirable" immigrants from Eastern Europe, and even working class whites by segregating them away from more prosperous persons and the consequent greater investment municipal government put in their neighborhoods. The Brookings Institute piece, which rattles off a long list of things that have prevented the narrowing of the wealth and income gaps, has a handy chart which shows how very closely Hispanic lack of wealth tracks black lack of wealth, just as an example.

 

Happy to accept that amendment.  A lot of my thinking in my post was somewhat narrow and very connected to a specific sort of East Coast/mid-Atlantic/mid-South experience of the US. 

I do think some of those groups have had better luck in transcending the limitations of their origins (e.g., Eastern Europe) within America.  I have not done the research but I would hypothesize that part of the reason of that ability has something to do with the legacy of slavery.